by Darcia Helle
The words sifted into her thoughts. She shook her head. “No, no, no, no, no…”
“It’s okay. Remember what we talked about? You were opening up. You were feeling safer. Remember?”
The voice soothed her. She liked the voice. The blanket was soft against her face. Random pictures came to her mind that she couldn’t seem to control. She saw the baby, then the girl. She saw what they did and what she’d become. All those pictures he’d shown her. She couldn’t stop the sudden rush of memories. She at least managed to get to her bathroom before she threw up.
Holly was saying, “She knows, doesn’t she? That’s why she screams when she sees me. Why? Who told her? Oh God, what should I do?”
Lucianna tried to rub the tension from her forehead. Vinnie watched Holly, unveiled disgust in his eyes. Ian had gone back to playing with the fire. And Ben sat staring at Holly, his face ghostly pale, probably seeing an older version of his daughter. No one was jumping in to help, which left Lucianna standing there with Holly and all the questions.
“This is Ben,” Lucianna said, waving her hand in his direction. “He adopted one of your girls.”
Holly’s hand flew to her mouth. “One? Oh God. Oh God.”
Lucianna led Holly to the couch. “Why don’t you sit down,” she said.
Vinnie raised an eyebrow and smoothed out a crease in his pants. He turned to Lucianna and said, “Quite the mess you’ve got here.”
Lucianna frowned at him. To Holly she said, “Why didn’t you tell us that you had twins?”
Holly shook her head, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. “I just… Oh God.” She looked at Ben for the first time and asked, “You have one of my girls? How is she? Is she happy?”
“Yes,” Ben replied, his voice barely above a whisper. “She’s very happy. And healthy.”
“Why only one?” Holly asked. “Where is her twin? Why weren’t they kept together? He promised. He promised they’d be together.”
Ben dropped his gaze down to the carpet. He said, “I didn’t know about the other. We weren’t given that option.”
Holly turned to Lucianna. “Do you know where she is? What happened to her?”
Lucianna raised a hand to her temple in a futile attempt to rub away the blinding headache forming there. She said, “We’re not sure, no.”
Vinnie stood up. From his expression, Lucianna could tell he was clearly not in the mood to coddle this woman. He said, “Your other daughter is methodically working her way through her own personal hit list. So far she has murdered two people. The bright side is that they were scum and deserved the fate they were handed. However, Corinne and Cameron McCormick are also on that list.”
Holly said, “No. No. That can’t be right.”
“That is what is happening,” Vinnie stated. “She plans to kill every person she blames for her situation in life, including her birth parents. And, you see, she believes that Corinne is her birth mother.”
“Oh God,” Holly muttered. She swiped at the tears that continued to fall. “Why is this happening? Why would she want to kill these people?”
“Because,” Ian said, “you let my father hand your kids off to a gang to sell. One of those kids was bought by a freak into child porn and prostitution. She was used, Holly. And abused.”
“Dear God,” Holly croaked.
Corinne stepped into the room, followed by Greg. She still clutched the baby blanket in her hands. She stared at Holly, her eyes clear and now full of anger rather than fear. She said, “How could you?”
***
This time the screaming was not in horror. It was in outrage. Corinne’s voice carried through the house, berating Holly for what she’d done to her. But, most of all, for what she’d done to those babies.
“You sold your own children!” Corinne said. “How could you do that?”
“Cameron made me,” Holly said, whining in much the way a two-year-old would.
“Oh bullshit!” Corinne said. “When are you going to take responsibility for the things you do in life?”
Ian sat on the arm of the couch watching his mother. He still couldn’t believe it, wasn’t sure he trusted what he was seeing and hearing. This was his mother again. The woman he’d thought he’d lost forever.
Despite the insanity around him, despite the fact that this Sara person was still running around with her hit list, Ian felt a sense of peace. He was almost happy to see his mother’s rage. It meant she was feeling again. It meant their lives had a chance at returning to normal.
He caught Greg’s eyes and nodded, a small smile playing on his lips. All those months with Endicott had done nothing. One day with Greg and his mother was ready to take on the world.
“I saw the pictures,” Corinne was saying. “I saw them. Do you have any idea what was done to that girl?”
Holly stared blankly, “What pictures?”
Corinne folded her arms across her chest. Anger radiated from her. “You mean you don’t know about the pictures?” she said.
“What pictures?” Holly repeated.
Ian glanced at Lucianna. He could see that she was wondering the same thing. What pictures?
Corinne blew out a long breath. She turned away, shaking her head. Greg said, “You should tell her. It may be easier for her to hear if it comes from you.”
Corinne leaned against her rocker but didn’t sit down. She said, “I saw the pictures of Candy. Your daughter. I think her name is Sara now. She was a beautiful baby. Blonde curls. Big blue eyes. She was turned into a whore, Holly. I saw pictures of her giving oral sex to men. She was just a child. Maybe twelve years old. And other pictures. Horrible pictures. What they did to her…”
Holly’s mouth hung open and her hands frantically twisted together in her lap. She said nothing.
Lucianna said, “Corinne, who gave you the pictures?”
Corinne cocked her head, looking bewildered. “Who gave them to me?” she repeated. “Oh… I…”
“It’s okay if you can’t remember,” Lucianna said.
“No,” Corinne said. “I want to. I…”
Ian was at her side. She relaxed against him and he hugged her close. He said, “You’re doing fantastic, ma. Just relax. Don’t worry if you can’t remember all the details.”
Corinne nodded, smiled. “The pictures,” she said after a moment. “I remember I was getting ready for…” She glanced at Ben, cleared her throat. “Getting ready for a date. The doorbell rang and I just assumed it was him. I opened it…”
No one made a sound. The tick of the clock suddenly became incredibly loud. Corinne closed her eyes, swayed a bit. Then her eyes flew open, her hand covered her mouth, and her eyes locked on Holly.
“What is it?” Ian asked.
“It was Brian,” she said. “Brian brought the blanket and the pictures.”
Holly’s head jerked up. “Brian? No! What are you talking about?”
“Who is Brian?” Lucianna asked.
Corinne turned to her. “Brian is Holly’s husband. He brought them. He wanted me to know.”
Chapter 58
“Why would Brian do something like that?” Holly cried.
“A better question,” Vinnie said, “is where did he get those things to begin with?”
“There only seems to be two logical choices,” Lucianna said. “Either Sara or the guy who bought her.”
“That’s not possible!” Holly nearly shouted. She focused on Corinne, eyes narrowed and full of hatred. “All of this… no… I… I don’t believe Brian would do that. He didn’t even know about the babies. You’re mistaken. You don’t remember what really happened. Everyone knows that you’re crazy!”
The words echoed around them. Holly immediately looked away, got up, walked to the front window.
Ian directed a few curses at Holly but Corinne stopped him with a hand on his arm and a slight shake of her head. She said, “I’m not crazy, Holly.” A little smile, then, “I was for awhile. Those pictures, the things he told me. I
couldn’t imagine my husband and my sister causing that kind of horror.” She darted a glance at Greg, seemed to stand taller. “I suppose it was easier for me not to remember. But that’s over now. I know what happened that day. I know what I saw and I certainly know who delivered this blanket and those pictures.”
Holly clutched the curtain. She stared out at the street, not turning or acknowledging Corinne. Lucianna thought she should feel some sort of sympathy toward the woman. She didn’t.
Ben stood up, stuck his hands in his pockets, pulled them out and rubbed his face. “This is getting us nowhere,” he said. “We need to find Sara.”
“We’re working on it,” Vinnie replied.
“Working on it how?” Ben said. “We’re all here sitting around debating facts. None of this is getting us any closer to figuring out where she is. Graham and I have been working leads for months and all we know is she had a place in New York. But she was already gone when I got there.”
“That’s because she’s here,” Vinnie said.
“Stating the obvious,” Ben muttered.
“Seemed necessary,” Vinnie retorted.
Lucianna rolled her eyes. “Enough already.”
Ben said, “How are you going to find her by sitting here if Graham and I, with all the department resources, have come up empty?”
“You’ve come up empty because you think like cops,” Vinnie said.
“And how do you think? As I recall, you were once a cop as well.”
“But he thinks like a criminal,” Lucianna said with a smile. “That’s his secret to catching them.”
Greg’s eyes darted back and forth like a tennis ball. He landed his gaze on Corinne and said, “How about you and I make some coffee?”
Corinne said, “Great idea,” and followed him out to the kitchen.
Lucianna said, “I just realized that I’m really hungry.”
“I could go for a pizza,” Vinnie said.
“Damn it!” Ben exclaimed. “Aren’t you people taking this seriously?”
Vinnie glared at him. “Sit. And please stop your ranting.”
“But -”
“Also stop talking,” Vinnie said. “We’re well aware of the situation here. You have obviously failed to handle any of it correctly; therefore you would do best by keeping your mouth shut and allowing us to handle it our way from now on.”
Ben opened his mouth, caught the look on Vinnie’s face, and clamped his jaw shut. He slumped into the chair and stared off at nothing.
“Do you think we should risk a pizza delivery?” Lucianna asked. “I don’t want to be responsible for some teenage driver getting a bullet stuck in his brain.”
“Hmm…” Vinnie shrugged. “I suppose that’s a possibility, although highly unlikely. Teddy is keeping watch.”
“Jesus…,” Ian muttered.
“What?” both Lucianna and Vinnie asked in unison.
Ian raked a hand through his hair. “I just never thought I’d be sitting here assessing the possibility of someone getting shot while delivering pizza to my front door.”
Holly spun around. “How would Brian get those things?” she demanded. “You tell me. If Brian brought those things here, how would he get them? And why would he come here? Why not… why not confront me? Why?”
No one had an answer to that. Ben stood up and paced. Ian wandered over to the fire, stoked the burning logs. Lucianna looked at Vinnie and said, “Maybe we need to go ask the man those questions.”
“He’s not home,” Holly muttered.
“And where might he be?” Vinnie asked.
Holly crossed her arms defiantly in front of her. Her words came out sounding like a challenge when she said, “Away on business.”
“Away where?” Lucianna asked.
Holly turned back to the window. “He didn’t leave a number,” she said.
“Well fine,” Vinnie said. “But where is he?”
She spun back around, threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know, all right? I just don’t know!”
Ian held the fireplace poker in his hand. He glared at Holly, looking as if he wanted to smack her with it. Lucianna walked to the middle of the room, putting herself between the two of them. Not that she expected Ian to actually hit the woman. But some things shouldn’t be left to chance.
Lucianna said, “Did he leave you, Holly?”
“I need to use the bathroom,” Holly said. She scurried across the living room and disappeared down the hall.
“Well…,” Lucianna said.
“Interesting,” Vinnie said. Then, turning to Ian, he said, “What do you know about her husband? Is he the type to disappear on occasion?”
“No,” Ian said. “Never that I knew of. He’s pretty mellow, easy going. I thought they were happy.”
“So he disappeared,” Vinnie said. “Hmm…”
“Maybe we should work on finding him,” Lucianna said. “For all we know, Sara may not plan on showing up here at all. We could be waiting around for nothing.”
“I’ll make some calls,” Vinnie said.
“What about your cousins?” Lucianna asked Ian. “Wouldn’t they know where their father is?”
“I would think so,” Ian said. “I’ll call them.”
***
Vinnie had a friend from the police force trying to hunt down Brian. Ian had contacted his cousin Andrea but had no luck. Neither she nor her brother Derek had any idea where their father was. All the two of them had been told was that he was away on business.
Holly had emerged from the bathroom and had since been curled up in a ball on the corner of the couch, not speaking to or looking at anyone. Ben sat in the chair, his right knee bouncing furiously, watching the minutes tick by on the clock. Lucianna, Ian, and Vinnie had gone back to debating the pizza when Vinnie’s cell phone rang. He flipped it open and said, “Yes?”
He listened, flexing the fingers on his free hand but otherwise showing no reaction. He said, “Can you take him down without incident?” A pause, then, “Right. Bring him through the garage.”
When he’d disconnected, he said, “Graham has parked around the corner and is currently doing his best to sneak up on us.”
Ben sprang from his chair. “What now? He’ll destroy my life!”
Vinnie ignored him. To Lucianna he said, “Teddy will bring him in.”
Ian said, “The man’s a cop. What if he has backup coming? What the hell are we doing?”
“The man is a crooked cop,” Vinnie said. He strode off through the kitchen, toward the garage access door.
Lucianna lifted a shoulder in that ‘what can you do’ fashion and followed Vinnie. Ian looked at Ben, muttered, “Jesus,” and kept his eye on Ben while they waited.
Chapter 59
“You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to tell you a thing,” Graham said. Then he glared at Ben, who was doing his best to shrink into kitchen wall, and said, “You candy ass. You’re dead, you know. Fucking dead.”
Vinnie had tied Graham to one of the kitchen chairs. He stuck a dishrag in Graham’s mouth, saying, “You have the right to remain silent.”
Graham squirmed, rattling the chair, tilting it one way, then another. He made gurgling noises as he fought to spit the towel from his mouth. They all ignored him, except for Ben, who had the look of a scared rabbit caught in the sites of a shotgun.
Ian said, “What are we supposed to do with him now? We can’t very well hold a cop hostage.”
“When this is cleared up,” Vinnie said, “we shall deliver him to his superiors. Or something like that, at any rate.”
“Something like that?” Lucianna said.
Vinnie shrugged. She shook her head but figured now was not the time for that debate.
The Loony Tunes theme song began playing. They all looked at each other in confusion until Ian snapped back to reality and realized it was his cell phone. He tugged it from his pocket, clicked it on, said, “Hello?”
His eyes roamed the room as h
e listened. He said, “You’re sure?” Then he shut the phone off and said, “Sara’s on her way here.”
“How do you know that?” Lucianna asked.
“That was…” He stopped, looked at his mother. He bit his bottom lip and looked away.
Corinne said, “Don’t you dare start coddling me now. Out with it, Ian.”
Ian looked at his mother, smiled, nodded. “Okay,” he said. “That was my father. He said someone by the name of Viper gives him info. I guess the guy is part of this K Unit. Anyway, Sara’s driving a little yellow Fiat and was just seen a few miles from here, up by the highway. Since this guy’s boss, Nico, is dead, they’re all battling for their place… I don’t know… whatever the hell they do in gangs. So the informant or whoever contacted him about Sara and this Viper guy turned it over to my father. I don’t know why. Didn’t ask.”
Vinnie was already on his own cell phone to Teddy, saying, “Cruise the vicinity. Let me know when you see her. Jack’s out watching the front. Fill him in before you go.”
Lucianna was ushering the women out of the room. She turned to Ben and Greg and said, “Bring them in the bedroom. Keep the lights off. Stay down and away from the windows. You know the drill.”
Greg caught Vinnie’s eye and said, “Do you need help?”
Vinnie waved Greg off. “Keep the women safe,” he said.
Taking Corinne’s hand, Greg headed out of the kitchen. Holly trailed behind them.
Ben started after them but Ian stopped him. Ian’s voice was ice as he said, “Don’t let her get hurt.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Ben said.
Corinne hugged Ian, kissed his cheek, and made him promise to be careful. Holly was near hysterical, her sobs shaking her body so badly that she could barely walk. Ian turned to Lucianna, cocked his head toward Graham, and said, “What about him?”
Lucianna said, “I guess we can’t leave him there.”
Vinnie pulled the dishtowel from Graham’s mouth. He said, “You want to tell us something worth hearing now?”